Podcast Episode 77 - The Curse of Being on a Great Leadership Team
IN THIS EPISODE:
This week Brad and Kevin are talking about the curse of being on a great leadership team.
And the curse is that if you leave and go back to a normal team, it can be quite confronting to realize that all the small things that added up to make that team great, simply aren't a part of the new team.
Brad and Kevin discuss what you can do if you find yourself in this position, and how you can be a positive catalyst by using your past experiences to help a not-so-great team move towards greatness.
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Podcast Episode 76 - Why You Can’t Save Your Way To Success
IN THIS EPISODE:
Sometimes either personally or in business, you focus on saving money rather than making money. This may also mean that you are so focused on being efficient, that you lose the opportunity for growth.
Spending time saving money might make you feel better about reducing waste, but if instead you spent that time making money, it could in fact produce ten or one-hundred times the impact.
This week Brad and Kevin talk about the true cost to people who try to save their way to success, and the compounding effect of being focused on growth rather than saving.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Brad Giles 00:12
Welcome to the Growth Whisperers where everything that we talk about is building enduring great companies. I'm Brad Giles, and as always joined today, by my co host, Kevin Lawrence. Kevin, Hello, and how are you today?
Kevin Lawrence 00:26
I'm doing great, Brad. I'm happy to be in September, getting things kind of going for what's like the start of the new year or the or the third round of this year for us. I'm excited. Excited to be doing the show today.
Brad Giles 00:39
Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. We've got a good show lined up. And, yeah, yeah, things are good. In my part of the world. It's spring, starting to warm up. We've had a very wet winter. So yeah, I'm excited. So as always, we'd like to begin with a word or phrase of the day. And what about yourself, Kevin, how would you open the meeting with a word or phrase,
Kevin Lawrence 01:05
My word is freedom. And it's a very important word to me. And because I'm going to the United States of America, tomorrow, I got, I went and got my COVID tests, I got both styles, a COVID desk today, the one where they just tickle your nostril and the one where they you know, go for your brain. Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought. But I got my test done. And I'm off to fly to Chicago in the morning for a meeting, coming back just under the wire, so I don't have to get tested a second time. And I guess I'm a freedom. I have not been in the United States America. Well, since March, it was March of 2019. And a year and a half longest I've never been in there. As a child. We went down almost every weekend, every second weekend, like and I see the US like I look at my window I see. Right into the US. It's right where I'm like, you know, 10 minutes from the border. So I'm excited to be traveling down to I love the state. So a freedom is my word. I get to experience that again. How would you read? You know, I
Brad Giles 02:07
laughed when you said that because my word is slash was very close to freedom as well. And the reason is, I saw this absolutely amazing video, American college football has started up again. And there's this song called into Sandman by a band called teleca. You may have and it's got this amazing, start to it. And I encourage you if you're listening to look it up. So it's the first game back after all of the COVID shutdowns for like a year or two for and then they pan across the stands, there must be 30,000 people all wearing exactly the same red jumper. And then there's that song, it's kind of got a bit of a gradual build up, then more and more build up. And all of the 30,000 people in stand a jumping up and down. Okay. And then it's just the players are in the dugout, and they're waiting as the music builds until it gets to a certain point. And then they sprint out for the first time since COVID. onto the pitch. And it just it can't help you mean you mean the field? Yes, the field. Okay, got it. Yeah.
Brad Giles 03:23
And, yeah, and it is just, it just that sense of freedom of we're back out like we're back out watching the crowd. Yeah, absolutely. It was in just like a one minute video. I encourage you to look that up. So yeah, freedom as well.
Brad Giles 03:39
Awesome. Well, great minds think alike. Well, let's, let's dig in. what's the show today, Brad? What's about success, isn't it? It's about, you know, what is the mindset for success. And the title is why you can't save your way to success. And then the subtitle kind of is stepping over dollars to pick up nickels and some people, some people will think that they can achieve success by focusing on the dollar that they save here are the dollar that they saved there. Now this is I guess this is a personal as episode as well as a team or leader based episode relative to your business. But it's the same principle. And so we see people sometimes who was so focused on saving $1 here or saving $1 there and it can be a little bit consuming and they think that that's how they're going to succeed. When sometimes, in fact, most of the time the often is the opposite is often true.
Kevin Lawrence 04:48
Yeah. And it's people have great intentions, but they get distracted. I remember one executive team we worked with and you know, it was a bit of a tougher time in the business and I made the decisions, too. Get rid of the disposable coffee cups in the kitchen where all of the executives and leadership team would go when it was a good size company. So they would, they would save money by not having to purchase paper coffee cups. I did a little bit of math, and it took me all of about 1.362 seconds to do. It's called the value of an executive or leaders time having to wash their own coffee cup. And if you take them the time of the week, you know, two cups of coffee a day, five days a week, 1012 cups of coffee, when you start adding up the time or the costs to wash the darn cup. It just you know, and maybe it was sending a message. And there's things about saving costs, they can send messages and things like that. But at some point, you know, it gets a little bit silly and people with beautiful intentions are saving money, but it's not worth the time it takes to save it. And they're not they're not balancing out time and money to look at true cost, not just currency in the equation. But again, good intentions. Sometimes go a little bit too far. And as you know, you and I've talked about Brad, the worst part is, is that they're there. It's not the ones that are saving on the wrong costs. Is that potentially in their business, they shouldn't be saving worried about saving costs, they should be worried about doing something else that might help grow the company. Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 06:25
Yeah. And it's easy, it's easy to get caught up in that. And that's why there's this kind of joke we have sometimes we're saying and I love accountants make it very clear. I love accountants. I'm just about to stick them I I love them. But there's a saying is that, you know, if you really want to screw up the company, you'll let the accountants run the business. Because you can't cut your way to success. I've said, and I know some accountants who are great, by the way, great CEOs. And also that's a bit of a joke. I know some accountants that are great CEOs, but just clipping costs, doesn't create growth or create a better injury. Yeah,
Brad Giles 07:01
but the accountant has a role, a very important role. And the leader or the CEO has another very important role. I wrote a book about that CEO role called made to thrive. But I had a friend who owned a, he owned a few businesses. And he as they do, he grew one. And then he started another one and he grew that one. But the initial family owned business, they decided several years ago to appoint their accountant to run the business. Then after about five years, he rang me up and he said bread.
Brad Giles 07:40
I'm an E, I've got a pause, because this guy swears a lot. So I'm trying to think about what he said, and tailor it to the episode or the language. So you know, he said, this account that he's been there and he said, we're making more money than we ever have, like the profits are outstanding. He said, but every year the revenue has gone backwards. Right? Right. And that's good. You can handle that for a year, which
Kevin Lawrence 08:08
is you can better squeeze the existing revenue, but then you energy's not on growing the revenue.
Brad Giles 08:14
Yeah. But then after about five years, it becomes alarming, because he's like, yes, this, this equation isn't working. And so it's important to focus on the little things to make sure that you're maximizing the profit. But if you look at it, without the lens of we need to continue to focus on growing the top line and the gap as well. You know, there can be some challenges in that.
Kevin Lawrence 08:41
Yeah. So the first thing to really be looking at is based on what your business needs, what does it need more, creating more value for existing customers or new customers? So you can grow the revenues and grow the margin? I suspect that all businesses need some of that. But you know, or do you have an overflow of juicy demand? That's healthy margin business? Do you have all of that that you need? Right? If you have all of that, that you need? You're probably not as worried about costs, you're probably worried about systems and optimizing quality of service delivery or something like that. So do you need more good business? Is that thing? Or are you getting a good business but you're not getting profitability, ie the if there's not efficiency in the system? You know, we've chatted before about Lean and lean process, which can really help if you've got an abundance of business and you just need to run more efficiently and generate more profit for every dollar that flows through the system. But normally, when people go to cut costs, they're actually looking the wrong way. They're actually it's not that you shouldn't cut costs, you often need to, but it's there. If you only do that they're missing the opportunities for more revenue and value creation and the challenges of reducing cost, I would say is not a high skill. tivity it's not cognitively demanding to go and find cost because it's always there. There's always inefficiency in the system.
Brad Giles 10:08
And people can get frustrated by waste. And yeah, then that frustration can translate into an emotion. And that emotion can lead them to make decisions that are not the best use of their time.
10:27
Yeah, exactly. And emotions. And that's why I've got great advisors. I was talking to one of my advisors recently about a project I'm working on. He said, okay, Kevin, you know, what is the value? in dollars of this issue you want to sort out? as we went through it, he's
Kevin Lawrence 10:44
like, why are we talking about this? Because there's not enough dollars in that problem for you to even be worth talking to me about it. Yeah. So it goes delegated. Let it go. Just do something, just don't think about it. Because it's not worth enough. You know, and based on the scale of businesses, you know, I had one, one amazing leader I worked with, unless the value of an issue was about 10 million, he wouldn't pay attention. And based on the scale of his business, that was about the right number, it took me a while to get it.
Kevin Lawrence 11:18
Yep. You know, but there's a lot of people were there, their minimum thought, should be on something that's probably a couple 100 grand. But they get stuck in a couple of grand.
Brad Giles 11:32
And so it makes me think about Peter Drucker, who we've spoken about before on this podcast. And he's saying, on the effective executive, his book, page number one, right? The job of an executive is to be effective, the job of a manager is to be efficient. And so if you're viewing this, this podcast only through a personal lens, then you aren't the executive of your own household or your own balance sheet. If you are in a business, then you are the executive of your own business. But remember, for managers, their job is to be efficient and for executive is to be effective.
Kevin Lawrence 12:16
Yeah. And so I heard a great case study on something called serious they're an aircraft manufacturer. I was interested in it, I mentioned to someone that I tried to get my pilot's license, I went on a test flight, hated it. And he asked me what airplane it was in, I said, a certain Cessna model. He goes, Well, that was probably your issue. He goes, you need to fly a serious and I'm like, okay, he goes because it's, it's almost like flying an iPhone. It's a modern airplane. And the great thing about Sirius is that if you mess up this little handle, you pull, and then a parachute pops out and then sets you on the ground. So it's made for recreational people like us that often screw up because we don't have enough experience. You just pull the thing. The plane drops to the ground probably breaks the landing gear cost you 25 grand and you're good to go. And hopefully it doesn't hit a house. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So anyways, he so I went, I went and test drove on these planes, it was beautiful, all that stuff. But as I studied the company, I found this great article about them and efficiency. And when they started, they started the planes, they sell about a million dollars. And they started the planes. And they started only fixing the problems that were $6,000 a plane or greater, only, because there's less of the there was money falling all over the floor. But they started at 6000 the plane, and then they went after they fixed all those they went to 5000 the plane, and then four. And you know, by the time of this article, they were still at $500 a plane, they were leaving waste of it was a very smart way interesting. Their manufacturing facility. I think they 5x or 7x volume in the same facility, because they just built efficiency. But again, they have great demand, they have a strong brand. But they prioritized and only focused on the big ticket stuff. Instead of wasting their time cleaning up 75 cents when it just doesn't matter.
Brad Giles 14:10
It doesn't it doesn't matter. I good analogy that I like is about a daily coffee. So most people would drink coffee. And many people would go and let's say that you spent $5 each word each week day on coffee. People might think I need to save my way to success. I need to stop having coffee. And then over a year that'd be $25 a week that'd be 13 $100 a year 1300. And the love we're going with this. So then suddenly, after two years, you've got 2600 but you need you know you're a sentient being and you need to find these small points of reward to keep you focused. there on the flip side of that How what would you need to do to make another $5 a day? And would it be possible? Yeah.
Brad Giles 15:09
So is it possible that you could actually, if you rather than focused on these smaller things that give you personal reward that matter what it is focused on the upside? And, you know, would it be possible to make $10 a day or $50 a week? it's certainly possible.
Kevin Lawrence 15:30
Yeah. So instead of trying to save you're not buy a coffee every day, think of how you could make five times what that coffee is worth every day. Exactly. Just look at it. And that's the way we think about business, instead of trying to put too much in and redirect the whole organization, to saving five bucks, redirect the whole organization to making 5000 bucks a person on different things, ie, changing our focus and not getting lost in it. I've seen it in lots of different companies where we've done this even to the point, one of our companies, we did a theme over a quarter, or every employee, and they were in business services for small businesses, right, like small mom and pop type businesses. And every employee was thinking about potential clients for the company. Yeah, so they had 350 people, every day, and there was a contest on a weekly and a monthly basis, we made it a theme generating leads for the company. Now, they had done things around saving some money here and there, but they were growing the business, and they got a lot of mediocre leads, but they landed. So the people like one of the frontline employees, brought in an amazing, amazing piece of business. And so instead, they just put the energy on growth. And I'll never forget a great CEO worked with his name is Brent parent, we call them BP. He's built and sold a number of businesses, just brilliant, brilliant CEO with this. And and and he always says to his people, you know, are you in the big circle? Or are you in the little circle? And he called it 95. Five. And you know, and you know, I'll keep this with me for the rest of my life. And what it really is, is the 95 is awkward 95% in the big circle is opportunities, and the 5% in little circles problems.
Kevin Lawrence 17:28
And really what he would say is, Hey, why don't you just go sell something? Yes, like, literally, there's
Kevin Lawrence 17:35
like, you know, go go sold, go solve a problem for a customer and sell something. That's the opportunities and people get worried about the problems. And I remember that organization, as we scaled it and had did a very amazing job with it, they did amazing job. Um, we ran it at probably two points less of EBITDA than we could have. But we ran it fast and a little bit loose. But we're growing like crazy and built making profits like crazy. If we tried to squeeze all the dollars out of the business, we would have slowed down the growth engine, and it probably wouldn't have been a fun place to work either. Right, because it was an entrepreneurial, had an awesome entrepreneurial spirit, lots of autonomy, all kinds of good stuff, but 95 595 on the opportunities 5% of the problems. And we did try to save money, but it wasn't really a major focus. The biggest was creating more more more gross profit by taking care of a customer.
Brad Giles 18:30
And that's the mindset that we're really talking about today. Which is if you know, if you have one single constraint, which is time, then how do you use that time most effectively, you can use five hours, let's say hypothetically five hours per week, trying to figure out how to save $100 over there. Or you could find you could spend five hours a week trying to make $100 over right in that direction.
Kevin Lawrence 19:04
Or you could spend five hours a week trying to analyze a spreadsheet. Or you could pick up the phone and talk to five customers. Yes, go and visit five stores or visit your frontline staff. You know, it's the root of all of this is that we have great intentions, but often our energy goes the wrong places. And it's it's even why in our quarterly planning sessions I do to the best of my abilities depending on who the company is and what they're like. But to get them to try and apply $1 value to each of their goals. And because the same thing we've seen things where no people are all fired up about this, this objective which we would call like a rock on a coordinate base I we've got to do this. Can we calculate the impact of the business? Yeah, it's about $5,000 and then the other three each have an impact of a million to two So if you've got a million, you know, 1,000,003 million, one and a half million, and then the other one was, it was it was a million dollars every year, like, forever. And then you got one, it's five grand.
Brad Giles 20:13
I love that. I love that. And I know you've said that before. It's Yeah, I put it a tribute a cost to your rocks to the priorities for the company. And then suddenly, you can say, well, what's good actually, is it actually worth doing, because sometimes they sound cool, or you feel like you're solving a big problem. But you know, an executive job is to be effective.
Kevin Lawrence 20:38
It is. And this applies to so many things. It's about, you know, dealing with certain types of, you know, some companies have an expense report. And if it's under a certain amount, you don't need to submit your receipts, there's all these things that waste a lot of so the key the message here is, is that there's lots of great things that we can think about saving money and saving money is a good thing, it should be considered when you're negotiating big contracts, you should negotiate it and try and get something better if you can. It's crazy to you know, negotiate and not get coffee cups for the whole leaders in a company. But then you renew your IT services contract and not try to get better terms, you should pay attention to those. But there's danger in getting too caught up into chasing pennies nickels around on the floor and missing the big stuff.
Brad Giles 21:26
Because you can't save your way to success going back to that $5 sorry, that five hours per week example, if you spent five hours a week trying to save money in the company, or five hours a week trying to grow trying to, to build to bring in new opportunities, then compound that over a week, a month, a year or even five years. After five years, the compounding effect of that five hours per week will be outstanding.
Kevin Lawrence 21:59
It absolutely. And that's Yeah, and there's many, many examples I'm thinking about as we go through this, the key is generally doing something to create value for our customer is a high value activity, because you're going to retain them, you're going to grow the business, you're going to get new additional customers, and you need to save so the ultimate is you have a culture of saving money and being smart with money. For sure. Yeah. And we're not saying to be silly about it. It's just you know, and having a good discipline around it. But also to make sure that you don't get lost and putting up energy on strategy. You know, there isn't, there's one more thing around cost. And I do remember, and this is a restaurant here that I worked with, and I remember being with him at one of his restaurants. And he wanted to take a bottle home, a bottle of wine home that night, for dinner parties have it in his restaurant had the one he wanted. So he bought it and he went to the bar and he bought it, he paid full price. And I said to him, his name is Bob. And he said, bud, so tell me why you're paying full price in your own restaurant. He goes Kevin, do you notice how many people are watching me right now? Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 23:09
Well, if I'm sitting here, I'm pulling out my own credit card to pay for a bottle of wine. I'm setting an example. You know, and and and I'm setting an example with my behaviors. Right? And I set an example with the questions I asked in the comments I said, but it's he said basically, it's it's he's setting the behavior of the you know, if the owner pays their own way, maybe more should probably pay their own way, and especially those losses of restaurants. So there's that there's the there's the you know, there's the discipline around it. But and again, to go back to BP grandparent, you know, he's talking about how, you know, he role models focusing on the big circle opportunities, and not really paying attention, but he's also not stupid with money. He wasn't stupid with money when he was a CEO with it.
Brad Giles 23:55
Yeah, yeah, some parts of the business, you need to focus on the cost constraints you need to but it's the broad issue here that as a, as a the leader of your house, let's say or one of the ladies of your house, or one of the leaders of your business. It's a bad, it's a problematic mindset that you can get into where you think that you can save your way to success. Instead, just accept that there is a cost of doing business. But the compounding effect of focusing on growing rather than saving can pay immense dividends.
Kevin Lawrence 24:39
So when you're thinking about where you and your team are focused, think about that. Are we overly focused on the wrong cost savings or maybe you need to do some more. But make sure it's the big picture like serious, the airplane company, you're focused on the relevance scale of cost savings and and and At least at the level, you're working out with executives and leaders at the front lines, they might focus on some of the smaller things. And that's okay, too. But then really is there enough energy going to the other things that create growth. And as Brad's examples of the compounding of growth, imagine if something would add a new customer or add a new service to a new customer, whatever it happens to be, your reporting doesn't need nothing needs to be perfect. It needs to be good to very good, and then perfectly take care of the customers. Awesome. Anything else you got there? Brad?
Brad Giles 25:29
Not really. Just know that it's a mindset. It's a trap that you can fall into. And if you can shift your mindset, yeah, it can compound and it can be really, really effective. So I'll just share one last
Kevin Lawrence 25:44
story before we close you know, I was just talking to someone today. And they were talking about some of my personal life and how, you know, they've been overcharged by $10 at a store, they're at the other day, and how they went back to get it because that was a waste of $10. And I just sort of chuckled and I didn't in this situation. I didn't want to say anything particular about it. I didn't want to be rude, but I did the math in my head. It cost them more than $10 to go get their $10 Yep. Right, it probably took an hour of time.
Kevin Lawrence 26:16
then there'd be some gas or petrol to go in the car, you know, and wear and tear on a car like we add all that up it out. If you add any you add minimum wage value to their time, it costs them money to go get their $10 Yep, that's a hard thing for some humans to do personally. And even more so in business I can some kind of times it's just not worth it.
Kevin Lawrence 26:40
So this has been the growth whispers thanks for listening. This is Kevin Lawrence and I'm here with Brad Giles and if you want the video version, go to youtube.com look for the growth whispers and to reach Brad evolution partners.com.au Kevin is Lawrence and co.com. So keep an eye on your pennies. But ideally start chasing the dollars or keep chasing the dollars or the 10s of 1000s of dollars or the millions of dollars and doing good work. Alright, have a great week.
Podcast Episode 75 - Genius of the AND
IN THIS EPISODE:
Many times we get stuck in what's called the "Tyranny of the OR". This means that we are stuck thinking about a solution to a problem in a binary way. For example, feeling your company has to choose between a focus on profit or purpose is an example of "Tyranny of the OR". Instead, we might think we can pursue a profit AND a purpose.
Another example might be someone saying we can't grow both customers and margins. Under the right circumstances it's the genius of the AND that can make a remarkable difference in your team.
This week we'll discuss the Genius of the AND concept, provide several examples, and explain how you can use this idea with your team.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Brad Giles 00:12
Hi there, welcome to the growth whispers where everything we talk about is building enduring great companies. My name is Brad Giles, and as always joined today by my co host, Kevin Lawrence, Kevin. Hello, and how are you doing today?
Kevin Lawrence 00:26
We're doing great, Brad, it's getting a little dark here, the nights coming to an end, the summer is starting to create shorter days as we move towards fall. But all is always good in this part of the world.
Brad Giles 00:39
The good thing is, as you go into shorter days, our days get a little bit longer and warmer known. So we're quite pleased about that. As always, we'd like to kick it off with a word or phrase, would you like me to go first? That looks like a yes. I'm going to start with Are you proud of your firm's profit? Now, that could be you as the founder. It could be you as a consultant, it could be you as an employee. Are you proud of it? Yeah, why was I Why? Because the profit is the net result. That's pretty much it. Everything that we talk about, it should ultimately result in that. What's yours, Kim? Mine is,
Kevin Lawrence 01:23
if I had a billion dollars, we have a band a Canadian band called The Barenaked Ladies, and they have a famous song knowing if I had a million dollars, you know, and that's, you know, I buy me a coach, I, you know, have some Kraft Dinner, you know, they have all kinds of crazy things. But, um, it was interesting. And again, I mentioned in last episode, Greg Smith, the CEO of Thinkific mentioned a strategic question they use, which is, if I had a billion dollars, or if we had a billion dollars in the bank, what we do just to expand their thinking. And what they found, is it generated some spectacular ideas, none of which cost a billion dollars, most of them they could do now. So it's a mind opening, like think real big, and what's possible. And, and often it is so yeah, so are you proud of your billion dollars thinking is kind of what we're, we're setting the tone with here today, Brad, I like it.
Brad Giles 02:23
That's a good way to start. That's a good way to start today. What are we talking about?
Kevin Lawrence 02:29
we're talking about something from the great thought leader, Jim Collins, and one of his principles, which he calls the genius of the end. And you know, and interestingly, you know, I have a good friend, and, you know, her whole philosophy and her work is around the end, right, not having to choose where you go, and where you can basically, you can feel proud and disappointed at the same time, or you can feel proud and almost self critical. At the same time, how you kind of fighting emotions happening, it's really interesting concept. In for our firm, we talk about the end, which we've used for years, which is about being having success at work and living an amazing life. Right, not having to give up one for the other. And then the other end, Collins's work, he found that a lot of people got stuck with the tyranny of the end, trying to do two things. And then it was a fight and basically almost making it an order or needing to choose a tyranny of the or pardon, yes,
Brad Giles 03:37
tyranny of the old
Kevin Lawrence 03:38
and having to choose between two options. And you know, when really the genius of the end is that how do you have both? And it takes more thinking sometimes or more strategy, but that's really where dig into is the genius of the end? And are there ways that you can take thinking where you were trying to decide verse and actually try and say, well, we're going to do both things? And how do we get a better impact or a better result by focusing on both
Brad Giles 04:08
and the tyranny of the or is really the foundation of this episode and, and the problem that people can get into when they think about any situation really, but what happens if you're thinking about only being able to react in an or, or the tyranny of the or because what that can mean is you can think we must make profit, or we must be a purpose led organization, they don't think about the possibility or the genius of we can, we can be a very highly profitable organization and can be a purpose led organization as a simple example. And then that, that tyranny can permeate so many parts of your decision making.
Kevin Lawrence 04:57
It's very limited thinking So many ways that scarcity based or scarce thinking, and some would say that being purpose led should make you more profitable. You know, I see I see, um, inexperienced leaders and companies saying, Well, if we got to grow the volume, you know, we got to decrease the margin. Like why no, you can grow sales volume and increase gross margin as a percentage while you grow, you just got to be smarter about it, you know, and if you're not, a lot of people will grow sales volume and drop margin, because then they're just picking up the low hanging commodity type business. But his point is, you can and there's lots of examples. And you know, as we're thinking about this, for the show, profit and purpose is a great thing. But also, you can have a very caring culture, and a high performing organization. You know, some people see very caring and supportive cultures, closer to a government agency that's full of love and wonderful things that, you know, doesn't make a profit or isn't high performing. But I've seen very caring organizations, but they are intense. And they work like crazy to get things done and have very, very high expectations as well.
Brad Giles 06:18
And Jim Collins talks about this concept of level five leaders as an example and level five leaders, they have the will, the will to build an enduring growth company, it's an incredibly difficult, yes, equally. And they have the humility to make that company bigger than themselves or not only about themselves, so they think about they want to build, and they have the will to build a company that is larger than themselves, and is not all about them. And so that's another example of the power of and
Kevin Lawrence 06:54
so we have one more of our clients who wants to more healing for five years, once the least five years, wants to build a $10 billion organization, that is his goal. And all the wonderful things that come with being a billionaire are part of his goals and his ambitions. And he is an absolute, he is the essence of a level five leader with incredible humility. So insane drive and massive goals. with humility, that is me. That's the kind of person we want to work with all day long. Yeah, great, great people are sometimes people would think, well, if you've got that much ambition, you're going to have the ego to go with it. Yeah. Right. And and and that is not the case. So tyranny I Oh, it is a Why do you think people get caught up in the tyranny of the order? And how do you shift to the tyranny of the end?
Brad Giles 07:52
So I'm going to get back to a quote a famous author called F. Scott Fitzgerald. Okay, you might have heard of him. His quote was the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. This is exactly what visionary companies are able to do. He didn't say last week, but that's, that's his quote. And, and so the, what we're saying is that a goal of a leadership team within this context should be that we want to be able to be intelligent enough to know that a primary goal is to have the end is to say, it's easy to a degree to say, we're going to be a profit, first organization, everything falls into that, but it's harder to hold that thought, and simultaneously, be able to function thinking and we need to be a purpose led organization.
Kevin Lawrence 08:59
Yep. So there's lots of situations where you have debates, you know, and people get caught up into these or ways of thinking and it is easier to choose left or right, versus how do we do both. Another example I see is, you know, when people have goals, it's, you know, we really want to reduce the cost. But we actually want to improve quality. Right now, sometimes you can be over committing when you pick these things, but it's, well, how can we do both, and then you end up with a whole if you take the time to think and brainstorm about the ways to make it happen. Sometimes there are solutions that decrease cost and increase quality even though it seems like the repurposing, like there can be ways to simplify processes, or use a different vendor or do something dramatically different it the differences it creates, it takes a higher level of cognition to figure them out. Sometimes not always, but to figure them out and when you put yourself into those You know, those more creative boxes? Yeah.
Brad Giles 10:04
Yeah. So another good example is around healthcare. We know that with for many medical practitioners, they may take the Hippocratic oath. And as they should, you know, do no harm. Yes. The but I health practitioner equally must be profitable. Otherwise, if they are not profitable, then that money to pay the loss needs to come from somewhere. And so, understanding that the purpose of an organization is is not to make a profit. But beyond that the organization cannot exist without profit. So, we've got to be able to hold those things for the patient
Kevin Lawrence 10:54
and the profit of the organization. And there are ways to do that. Yes, some people default to just what's right for the patient. Some people default to justice, right for the profit of the org or the org, and to try and think about are there ways and that's the ultimate Win Win, right? And I remember a negotiating story about two kids fighting over an orange. Yeah. And the mom was smart enough to say to Johnny, Johnny, why do you want the orange? He goes, Well, I need the peel for my science experiment. And then Sally was Sally, what do you need for? Well, I'm hungry. So she's like, Okay, great. Johnny takes the peel. Sally takes the inside of the orange, both kids are happy, right? That's an end, right? Is there a way that they can do both. So it's just, it's, it's it just requires more thinking. And that's why people kind of have a hard time with it. So you'll often in organizations we work with, we will say we need a higher quality of talent, we by default 90% a player's as a goal, many organizations we have for their key key key seats or key roles. Yeah. And we want to speed up the hiring process. Or it's 90% eight players and spend less total compensation as a percent of our gross margin. So our people cost less. And we have more of them being high performers. And it's doable. We've done it lots of times, you know, another one is to relentlessly execute our systems, and innovate. So for example, one company that we work with, they have a separate and like many do separate innovation team with an innovation budget. And they're always testing new things. So what they've done is, some of the innovation is pulled off and separated. Sometimes it gets to be too much. The core people that are driving every day of execution, stay focused on that. And then a few people focus on the innovation and how it can improve. And then you bring those in and incorporate them. So it's both sometimes you just have to carve up responsibilities to allow some of these things to happen. But the organization can relentlessly execute the as is, while some other new organization are innovating at the same time.
Brad Giles 13:08
That's a great example of what Jim Collins describes in if you can imagine the yin yang symbol, where on one side, he says stimulate progress. And then on the other, protect the core, so on protect the core that's about core values and purpose. And the ideologies of the firm that should be enduring. They should be here for generations, with an Asterix, but then on the other side, we've got to have an engine that stimulates progress. And it is possible to do those both of those things, you do not need to reinvent the firm all the time when it comes to the ideologies.
Kevin Lawrence 13:50
Yep, absolutely. A great example that Jim has a shirt. Another one is, we've seen where we would reduce the size of teams, and expect more output of those teams. Yeah. Because what's interesting, even in our world, when you create a team of 25 people trying to work on something, it actually gets bogged down and slow down. And there's a raid size. You know, they often say over teams as to pizza teams, you know, whatever two pizzas can feed is probably the right size team member, which is, you know, five, six people. Yeah. And depending on their appetite, but it's just that you can often speed things up and be more productive by having fewer people involved. That's a real simple one. One of my favorites, and I wrote a blog on this years ago was called joy and pain. That's like how the best leaders know how to celebrate and instill and create joy with it with their teams, and create a lot of pain or a lot of tension when things aren't right. It's in both. It's like the parent that can be loving and supportive. And the parent that can really give you crap when you screw up. Yeah, and great, great leaders are able to do both the great leaders aren't just nice guys are nice women, right? They have both sides of the coin, and they know how to use both. So it's an and they can be tough. And they can be caring and supportive. And I've looked at some of the best CEOs and execs I've worked with, they have that that have hardest, and that and their heart.
Brad Giles 15:23
That's the premise of great leadership, it's lots of love, and lots of discipline, if you only had lots of lots of discipline, you've got a tyrant. And if you've only got lots of love, you've got someone who's a walkover. So it's the marriage of those two, within one leader that makes for greatness.
Kevin Lawrence 15:44
Yeah, and we could go on forever and ever and ever, but it's, you know, increase profitability, and increase customer satisfaction, right? Increase output, and increase employee engagement. Right, increase employee engagement, and increase the percentage of a player's, yeah, right, or, you know, you can pick any two variables, but the main thing is, is that you often end up with better ideas, because you're putting more challenge into the system, you have to be more creative when you bring those two variables together. So that the recommendation we'd make is that look, when you're, when you're working on something really important in your business, you know, and if you're really see that it should become an and, you know, the real challenge to bring those two variables together, because they're both really critical, do a separate brainstorming on how we could do both, right and break the break up into three teams of, you know, five or six people get a list of a whole bunch of things that we could do ways that we could do both? print, bring those ideas together, have people present them, discuss them, prioritize them, get people to go back again, and say, Okay, let's take the top four, were top three, because you have three groups, and brainstorm even further on those on how we could do that how I mean, really opening up people's brains to possibilities, and then you can start to see ways that these things can happen. Versus that you know, the first look, you might just walk by and say, yeah, that's gonna be too hard.
Brad Giles 17:20
That's the point, right? Because if you were to say, here's what we want to do, we want to grow our customer numbers by 10% per year, and we want to grow our customer profitability by 10% per year, it might the tyranny of the or might instantly kick in with the people that you're talking about it to worry about. And they may say, Look, that's too hard. We Why don't we just focus on one? And then we can do that? Well, we can do both? Well, that is the point. It's the genius of the end, what if we could do both, what will be the top three things that we needed to do to be able to do both because the compounding effect of that is remarkable.
Kevin Lawrence 18:02
Now, let's be careful, I've got a client I nicknamed comma, because we say we're going to have three to five objectives for a quarter. And he will put three to five in each of the three to five objectives. And we'll put commas between them. So I got an A teacher with a big calm on it and gave him a hard time about it. This is the CEO. So now he doesn't use commas anymore, he stacks them, he calls it a stack, because it sounds like a more sophisticated thing. The point is, you got to be careful not to use this to justify doing too many things. Now, we're getting down to something that has massive value strategically or tactically, that it's one thing that you're trying to say, we kind of got to work both sides of the coin at the same time, versus using this technique as an excuse to clump together a whole bunch of ideas that are of low value or low impact to organization that just shouldn't just be deferred, or left alone.
Brad Giles 19:03
Yeah, but yes, you're right, full stop. What we're saying is, there is a genius within the end. So try to look at it from both angles, and try to appreciate if you only say or, and you don't say and in some circumstances, you could be missing out on quite a lot. Like it's a kind of a closed mindset, perhaps
Kevin Lawrence 19:28
it absolutely is and just don't use 10 ends all at once. We're talking about one and between two variables. Miss Kirk, you know who you are. We're not using this as an excuse to have 10 variables in one objective. Okay, awesome. So let's kind of summarize that. So really, we're talking about the genius of the end which is inspired by Jim Collins. His work he does some great restaurants and the tyranny of the or people get stuck and having to choose between two By the way, my favorite technique for the genius and we did it at the breakfast this morning went for brunch this morning. And there's three amazing types of eggs benedict. So I got one, my partner got another and we shared sharing meals is a beautiful way. It's a beautiful genius of the end, you don't have to choose, you get to share. There's nothing so Brian,
Brad Giles 20:22
that's great. Why did we say that one in the beginning of the app? I know we should.
Kevin Lawrence 20:27
So it's the solution to a Eggs Benedict, when you can't decide or whatever it is sharing the genius of the end versus tyranny of the or as per Collins and they only talked about exactly the examples of profits and purpose and caring and high performance, increase sales and increase margin, you know, get higher portion, every team that's high performers, and you hire them faster or higher percentage of your team is high performers and overall less total compensation dollars as related to margin. restlessly, relentlessly execute and innovate, reduce your team size and increase output, fewer customers and more sales, right? Really, really celebrate like crazy and create lots of tension when things don't go right.
Brad Giles 21:18
And falling. Yeah, and we can you know, we can be and this was the first one you said. But we can be a purpose led organization or purpose focused organization. And we can be highly profitable. It just takes a deeper level of thinking like we don't need to be only one of those two. What a good episode what episode so let's move to close. This has been the growth whispers. My name is Brad Giles. And you can find me at evolution partners.com.au. And of course, Kevin, you can find at Lawrence and co.com. Of course there's an end in there, the ampersand. And so also you can find us on YouTube. We've got some videos up there you may be interested in. So thank you for enjoying our episode. I hope today on the growth whispers and we look forward to chatting to you again next week. Enjoy your week.
Podcast Episode 74 - The Power and Struggle of Saying No
IN THIS EPISODE:
Saying yes comes at a cost. Understanding the cost of yes and the challenge of saying no can help you become a more effective leader.
The price of yes includes time, money and "busyness" that can impact our effectiveness. Also, saying no to the mediocre things means you can keep room for greatness.
This week we talk about the price of yes and provide some tools and techniques to help you say no when required.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GROWTH WHISPERERS:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Brad Giles 00:13
Hi there, welcome to the growth whispers where everything we talk about is building enduring great companies. My name is Brad Giles. And I am joined today as always, with my co host by my co host, Kevin Lawrence from Vancouver, Canada. Kevin, how are you doing today?
Kevin Lawrence 00:30
Doing great, Brad. It's a Yeah, it's a great day. Looking forward to the show we're covering off tonight. It's a topic that I need to keep focused on and working on myself. So I'm really looking forward to it.
Brad Giles 00:42
Awesome. So we always like to begin with a very simple word or phrase to kick us off as we advocate people doing meetings, what's your word or phrase for today?
Kevin Lawrence 00:54
no, there's a couple of different things rolling in my head. But it's automation. Automation is the word of today. And it's how do you get things in your world set up to take care of themselves. So whether it's automating technology, although I'm having some hassle, with some technology, that's making it more challenging, but I automate technology. Or it's automating systems to allow people to manage themselves, ie reporting or things that create environments for people to do their best work without having to be constantly poked and prodded and reminded and reset. So yeah, automation, looking the automate in terms of systems. Obviously, technology can automate a lot of things. But what can you automate in terms of systems in particular to allow things to be to perform well, with a lot without a lot of intervention? Oh, you, Brad? Well, very good,
Brad Giles 01:46
very good. Um, how are you helping to educate your team? So I remember distinctly, probably about five years ago, we went to Las Vegas and I got to to a Zappos company on when Tony Shea, a very successful entrepreneur, and they had the philosophy to have a company library that any staff member could take books from, that they kept replenished. So they sort of curated a group of books that they felt were the best in general topics. And I remember going into the library just, yeah, just thinking this is a really cool way. And I mean, I do that with leadership teams, we have this thing called personal professional development that we work on each quarter. But are you keeping your team ahead of the growth curve? So yeah, it's really just about growing, growing, the leaders within your team and your company, automating? I don't know how to you're the person who Mater meeting and
Kevin Lawrence 02:43
educating your team, automating educating your team, that's a great weave in. Okay, well, let's jump right into today. So today, we're talking about the power and the corresponding struggle of saying no, no, Tuesday, one of the shortest words in English language, outside of I know, is a very powerful world word. And a difficult word for a lot of people. And even when we're well intentioned, there are situations where things are at a decision point. And we can say yes or no, there's many things are midstream. We can say yes or no. Or when something's been running for a long time that sometimes we do need to say no, instead of Yes. And it's almost like no, I'm sorry, yes, it's assumed. So it's the power of saying no, and the root of it today we're talking about is that truly, we all have limited time. No, we have limited time on our hands. There's always a limit to money to a certain degree. And we have a limit of energy. You know, how much energy we have the dedicated things, and truly thriving in our life. And thriving in our work and thriving in terms of self is just a matter of what you say yes. And what you say no to that's it. Life is just saying yes and no, it's very binary. And how we allocate those yeses and noes makes a huge impact on the rest of our world. And it's not rocket science. But that's kind of what we're digging into today. The you know, the, the opportunity, but also the struggle of this magical word. No,
Brad Giles 04:20
yeah, I think that the thing about No, it can work really positively or really negatively against our true intent. And that's why we kind of call it the power of saying no, or the why that matters. Because if you have a problem that you want to solve, sometimes saying no, can it can be counterintuitive, but it can be quite powerful. Sometimes you might want to make a decision. And you're using the word no. In order to not say yes And that's actually could be working against and kind of a bit of an anchor on your progress or your, your, your movement forward. So yeah, just really getting into what is it that no can do for us to help to free up our time and money?
Kevin Lawrence 05:16
It is. And it's hard sometimes because we there's tension or it's awkward. Sometimes we just want to say yes, because we're curious, or, and I'm really bad for saying yes. When I should say no, I have a lot of mechanisms in place. And we'll get to some of those today. And some things that have really showed up in my world is if you, if you say yes to Okay, or mediocre opportunities, then you can sometimes be saying no to amazing opportunities, so there's no room for them. But if you don't say yes to some opportunities, sometimes there's not as many coming that you might want. And there's a lot of factors at play. So we're just going to share with you some scenarios that we often end up getting stuck and no would be very powerful or helpful. And then we'll give some specific techniques to help with saying no, when you kind of know that you should, or you have a feeling that you should. So the first thing one first situation. And we kind of talked in this one already, but it's it's reminding yourself when you're making a decision by saying yes to this thing here, I actually am by default, I'm saying no to something else. So I'll give an example in my world, you know, when I say yes to a client that needs some additional help, and I do the work myself, I'm saying no to my team having an opportunity to do this work, potentially. I'm also saying no to maybe having some extra free time. I'm also saying no to potentially having time with my kids, my partner, my parents, you know, I literally by saying yes to a project, I could be saying no. To 10 other things. Yeah. And I remind myself, because I love to help my clients and I love those additional projects. That's a simple thing is just truly remembering in that moment. And realizing there's consequences to every Yes. And then there's also no consequences to every No.
Brad Giles 07:24
And I love that because it's like you can have a pre prepared list mentally that you can have in your head. So when someone says, Do you think we could just maybe catch up for coffee, I just want to tap your brain about something or whatever The reason is that they say, then you can think intuitively, well, that means that I don't get to spend time with my family, I don't get to, you know, further my strategy, I don't get to spend time with my team, whatever it might be, and all of those, or if you can have that simple checklist in your head as to the other things I'm saying no to if I say yes to you. It can make that No, just a little bit easier.
Kevin Lawrence 08:09
Sure. Or, like I said, almost an automated system, like my default answer to if someone wants to have coffee is no, I just don't do it. And out of you know, 50 requests, I might do one and I know that might sound bad, it's just I'll jump on a phone call. Anytime I'll talk to anyone for 15 minutes if it's your client wants me to or somebody else wants me to. But the coffee, I'm gonna go physically in a half hour coffee takes an hour and a half. I just I'm just not interested I can cover what I need to on the phone. I don't need more personal connection with people maybe during COVID but not now. So. So there's you know, doing having that that checklist is one thing and having even a pre defined that you just don't do certain things. Um, other situation, go ahead read.
Brad Giles 08:59
And that really leads us into kind of the second point that we've got here, which is when you feel the pressure to say yes, you know, if you've got that checklist, it makes it just a touch easier, because it is hard to say no. You don't want to let the person down. Maybe you've got a personal relationship with them. Maybe you actually want to help them with their problem or issue as well. So it can be quite personally difficult to say no. And you've got to know that. No, you've got to know you've got to understand that that pressure to say yes is ever present. And it's okay to say no.
Kevin Lawrence 09:43
Yeah, and what I do in those situations, again, I have hacks for all of these things because you know, I get stuck on these. is that when I feel pressure to say yes, I normally have it's one of my techniques I use the wasn't on the list here. I had it in a list of artists. I generally say, I've learned to in the moment almost never say yes. And I'll say, Okay, let me think about that. Let's chat tomorrow. Or let me talk to Janice, my right hand or Dean or someone on my team. Let me talk to somebody. And then I'll get back to you. Because my default when people ask me to help us, I'm gonna say yes. So I have the same if I'm, if I'm, you know, shopping and thinking about buying something, I was in Quebec City, and I saw a painting I loved. I'm like, Okay, I got the information I wanted. And then I said, Okay, um, let me think about it. I'll come back and add, there's still a risk of not getting it. But I've just know, I step away when I feel that pressure, and I'm not sure there's times when I know what I'm not sure. I defer. And, and I, yeah, let me think of what I come back, when I kind of my brain settles down that I know what the right decision.
Brad Giles 11:01
You know, the other one is, I don't, I don't do that. So it's like you're saying no, but you're also providing a reason. And so some people can find it quite difficult to directly say no, and but to use your example of grabbing a coffee. Look, I don't grab coffees, I just don't do it. It's one of my rules. Yeah, happy to have a phone call for like 15 minutes, if that's gonna help you out. And you can use that across a whole range of things is that I don't do that. That's, I just don't do it.
Kevin Lawrence 11:34
You know, it's interesting. I've got a great example, I've got a piece of furniture sitting in my new place. That will be a reminder for a while and the couple $1,000 I lose on it? Because I didn't say no, when I should have you not had an ad in this new place getting renovated. And someone persuaded me to buy this table. I liked the table. They showed me the color sample that they recommended, like no, I don't like that color. It looks like a 1990s bedroom suite. It's like pinky gray. I don't like the color. They said trust me, trust me, it'll look good because of this. And that I said, No. And they persisted, like five times. And finally I said, Okay. And now I got a freakin ugly pink table in the middle of my place. And, you know, it's nothing that I'm gonna lose, I'm gonna basically I'm selling it, it's brand new, but I'm selling it on marketplace, and all you
Brad Giles 12:30
know, is, you know, there's a chance that could come into fashion
Kevin Lawrence 12:34
is, you know, I'm thinking, you know, actually, and it probably is in somebody's house, it just isn't impassion in mind, I don't know when it's a nice table on someone custom painted it to make it look beautiful, and all this stuff, and I can't stand it. So that's my, that's my, that's my decision. You know, I even though this person recommend, I said, Yes, I bought it. I'm stuck with it. And now a couple 1000 bucks later on, I already bought another one, you know, that I like and the thing is, it's, there's certain situations, and if the truth is I was super busy. I didn't really have time to think about it. I'm like, No, and they were so persistent. I said, and that's again, that's on me, that's my I made the choice. There's a bunch of reasons. But you know, and every once in a while, we get a good reminder that I won't do that again soon, at least not for another week. So the third one is when something just goes to four and needs to stop or just needs to end like that. It's sometimes it's like, you know, there's a book called necessary endings. Oh, that's actually quite a big book. It is it is actually in it's a really good book. I really enjoyed it. Dr. Henry
Kevin Lawrence 13:42
It is That's him. Correct. And, but when something comes too far, you just need to call it and whether it's a project, whether it's a product, whether it's a supplier, whether it's a friendship, whether it's a car, it doesn't matter, whether it's an old sweatshirt or hoodie, whether it's a relationship with a table, it was a very short term relationship, Brad, I've been seeing that table for a boat 27 days. And that's that that was a very short term table relationship. But yes, you just got to call it and again, there's that tension of ending it or throwing something away whatever it happens to be. It's just, you know, you gotta remove the b grade stuff in your world to make room for the eighth grade. And that's another scenario why my cover number four, Brad that you brought up this one? You really like this one?
Brad Giles 14:37
Yeah. So Henry cloud like just want to close that off because his book, necessary endings, it gives you great comfort in closing any of those things and it not only says it's okay, it is why it's so important to finish these things, study and moving on to the next one. So Sometimes you can be stuck on making a decision and you get analysis, paralysis, and you're like, ah, I might just leave that decision. What about if I'm just white, or you can't decide. And so you leave it there, and it just hangs over, you just hangs over you and occupies your mental bandwidth. And so if you've got one of those things, or two, or five or 20 of those on incomplete decisions, it's it's just sitting there, occupying your mind. So instead, simply saying no, can be okay, you can always restart that software project in the future for your company, if it seems, if it pops up again, in the priorities that you're trying to set. Or you can always, you know, decide to buy another house in the future. If you want to start that again, but just saying we're not, I can't decide, I can't commit to a yes. And therefore, I'm going to commit to a no, it's not a kind of wiggly saying, hell yes. Or Hell no. It's not a hell yeah, then it's just a no, like, force yourself to be a bit binary in that area.
Kevin Lawrence 16:24
It is, and that's when I use that one a lot. If I'm not sure if I'm stuck in the middle, it means no, because when I really want something, I really want something, it's really obvious. So haryanto was great. The second thing on that one, is there's some decisions that can be easily changed or reversed. Right and some things can't. So you know, what you're reminding yourself the the the the the cost of change if you don't like the decision. The other piece on this is what I call is toads in my book, right? There's a book in your oxygen mask versus a chapter called liqueur, toads. And these are things you just keep thinking about. And they start burning up mental bandwidth, and they clutter your mind incomplete things. Decisions is one of them. So you know, if it don't, you know, just find a way to decide and I say don't obviously do that nastiest thing first thing each morning, but a lot of times it's decisions. Yeah. Because there's, there's friction around decisions are lingering things, and it burns up space. So Hellyar, no lingering decisions, some point, just decide. And you can say no, or sometimes you can just say not now, like, I'm not ready, let me think about this, you know, I'm happy to revisit it in January, or whatever it happens to be. It's also hard when you've got thing I've got with my kids, you know, you get some things where you got multiple people trying to decide. And that's really, really hard. And again, you know, sometimes saying no, fine, we just won't do it is the best choice. If he can't find a way and then sometimes even by saying no, people will come back and almost to have a stronger desire to push through. Like when you just sort of you know, call it quits, but sometimes get it off and get it off people's mind.
Brad Giles 18:11
Yeah, we want to force those decisions. We've spoken before about the importance of the weekly meeting. And part of that is that you have all the decision makers and influences in the room. And so when you've got that, that enables you to be able to force those decisions and now is okay, but an absence of a decision isn't perhaps not okay. Correct.
Kevin Lawrence 18:36
And then the next thing excited number five is that sometimes you just got to change your mind. And I've learned with some of the best entrepreneurs I work with, they always reserve the right to change their mind. They have no problem changing their mind if they need to. And so we interviewed one of the CEOs who work with them Greg Smith of think if ik is one of our clients that has done exceptionally well went public massive valuation, massive success. And he told the story and I haven't written down and I forget who it was it'll but it basically is a story about strategy. And the story is about this captain of the ship and I think it was in more than movies like Waterworld or something like that. And the captain just goes you know, they don't know they can't see that it was okay work no any points a certain direction. And all the men start rolling like crazy. And his right hand goes um, is their land over there. He's like, I don't know. He was on Why are you saying you know full steam ahead go that direction. And they'll steam in this case is men paddling. He's up because well, we'll go for a month and then we'll either we're going to see land or we'll see something else in the mall. Fix it then but right now we need to do something. Right and it's you know, there's a lot of things around strategies trying things you don't have to make perfect decisions. As long as when you realize your decision is imperfect, you make a change. And so when you reserve your right to change, and in some cases say no to something or to you know, Collins would call it, you know, shooting a bullet and then choosing to not to shoot anymore. That is incredibly important when you have the Epiphany and you just know you need to change. And that's critical. And that's hard for some people. But it's, it's critical if you're going to continue to find ways to improve
Brad Giles 20:29
Yeah, give yourself a license to change your mind, throughout the course of the decision making process, when the time when you're launching something, I always say that to leaders, like, make sure that you don't, you don't come up with an idea. And then suddenly you say, this is our new bright, shiny object, and then suddenly, you get six weeks down the track. And I'm like, Oh, that was such a dumb idea. Why do we do that? Instead, instead, share the process with them and say, This is what we're thinking about doing? And how does that resonate with you. And
Kevin Lawrence 21:06
perfect, allows you to change your mind allows you to iterate allows you to make progress allows you to stop stupid mistakes, or bad decisions. And a D risks decision sometimes too, if you can do that. So a couple of other techniques we've listed in here is look at the cost of not saying no time, energy and money. We touched on that a little bit. Yeah. But really what it is there are sometimes there is a big cost of continuing to say yes, you know, we have one business that we worked with, and they had a division. Just want to perform. We did the math, it was 75 grand a month. Yeah. Right, and not dealing with it. And at some point we finally ended up did or ended up dealing with it. So let's do a calculation, which we talked about a little bit earlier on. Another one I love is is is an contrast as well. But it's not now versus No. Yeah, like not now. It's and you're not saying no, forever. By the way. Another technique I've learned and with, especially with entrepreneurial leaders are entrepreneurs, many don't like the word No, I actually have a plaque. I haven't set it up yet my new place it says, do it because they tell you you couldn't write science in there. But, you know, for a lot of entrepreneurs, you say no, and they're not going to accept it. Yeah, they want to know, in what case? Could we or How is it possible? Or? or How much is it going to cost? So what I've learned with entrepreneurs, instead of saying no, and say they have a really bad idea, I'll just say, Okay, well, how can we take that idea? and have it produced 10 million a year of profit? Yeah. Right. Like if it's gonna produce a million, and that's not enough in the context of their business, just asking a question and raising it up. So raising the bar, versus just saying, no, that's not going to work? Because it's even though it might be true. Sometimes it doesn't land so well.
Brad Giles 23:04
Yeah, I like that one. I like that one a lot. Equally. The previous one, you mentioned it, just to reiterate, there is a cost that we are bearing, there's a cost of time, there's a cost of money. Think about if I am or I'm not saying no. Like, is this stopping me? Or is this costing me more time or more money? This is the constraints that we've all got. And of course, then the last one that we've got is Jim Collins, stop this. So this isn't necessarily No, but this is applying this principle in a slightly different way. So that we're able to say, Okay, so what are the things that I need to stop? Or say no to? So what are the things that that are consuming too much time or money, or energy is we just kind of alluded to? So the gym constantly is a great, great tool to force you to figure out what to say no to create a list.
Kevin Lawrence 24:04
Yeah, and getting teams to go through and brainstorm and have everyone commit to one thing they can say no to themselves, which is healthy to free up bandwidth in this system. And then have them recommend the top things that the company could say no to. Great list, lots of good thinking. So just to kind of summarize real quickly that it's about saying no, and really the principle is that we have limited resources. And if we say yes to some things, and don't say if we don't say no, and end up saying yes, we're saying no to a bunch of other things, because of our finite resources that we have, and everyone has fun, and it might be okay. And maybe you can pull it off and do both things. And then and the other thing is, is that you can also fill the bucket with mediocre things versus leaving room for awesomeness and this is the bucket of your life or your work. And you'll say yes to one thing say no to one other. We Talk about sometimes under pressure, we say yes and almost under duress or social pressure. And we talked about, you know, hey, let me think about that, or I don't really do that, or I'm not interested, or let me discuss it. But if you're really feel pressure, sometimes deferring it to somebody else, I really want to cover number three,
Brad Giles 25:23
when something goes too far, and it needs to be stopped, sometimes things just keep on going. And then next was stuck on making a decision. So sometimes we can get analysis paralysis, and we can be in this kind of middle spot between yes and no. And we need to force ourselves to say it's hell, yes, or hell no. And it's okay to do that. Next, and sometimes you just need to change your mind, you've got to leave yourself, the space, the capability to be able to force yourself to say, you know what, we tried it. And now we're going a different way. And that's okay. And then we just went through a few different types of techniques. For example, not now, how to make it bigger, better, faster, instead of No, rather than saying, No, we can look at it to kind of apply a third element into this no concept. So yeah, that I think that kind of sums up where we're at. Exactly. And
Kevin Lawrence 26:27
the final thing is that I moved around them list their bread and butter is the stock list by Jim Collins. I was sorting. But it's the stock list by Jim Collins and just getting as a regular activity, whether it's at the end of a quarterly meeting, or just having teams think about what they need to say no to because it's not natural. And organizations get bogged down with a bunch of stuff that just doesn't need to happen. Well, it was a good chat about No. So thanks for listening everyone. This has been the growth whispers podcast with Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence. And you can reach Brad at evolution partners comm.au and myself, Kevin at Lawrence and co calm and the YouTube versions just search for the growth whispers on YouTube. Have an awesome weekend that we hope you practice saying no more often than you might have. Otherwise, have a great one.
Podcast Episode 73 - Holding People Accountable (Part 2)
IN THIS EPISODE:
It's important for leaders to develop a process for holding people accountable. Without that commitment they end up wondering why their teams aren’t embracing accountability.
There are two key ingredients required to effectively build team accountability: tools and environment.
In part one of our two-part series on this topic, we looked at the tools that are required to create accountability on your team.
In part two, we discuss the elements and the environment required to build team accountability.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GROWTH WHISPERERS:
Podcast Episode 72 - How the Best Leaders Create Team Accountability (Part 1)
IN THIS EPISODE:
Many leaders want to know how to hold a team accountable. Often they will look at the people they work with and wonder why they aren't embracing accountability.
There are two key ingredients required to effectively build team accountability: tools and environment.
In part one of our two-part series on this topic, we dig into the tools that are required to create accountability on your team.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GROWTH WHISPERERS:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Brad Giles 00:13
Welcome to the growth Whisperer is where everything that we talk about is building enduring great companies, companies that you love that you want to keep companies that matter to you, that you're living your passion inside. I'm Brad Giles. And as always, today, I'm joined by Kevin Lawrence, my co host, Kevin, how are you doing today? My friend?
Kevin Lawrence 00:38
Doing great. I'm always feel like I'm doing great. Just my second time recording my new home studio here. And I got half the stuff working. I'll get the other half working over the next couple weeks. I'm just sitting here making some adjustments. Yeah, really good. Looking forward to the show. I love this conversation on accountability. It's quite controversially a no bread. Not a lot of people love doing it yet. It's very effective. I think it separates the best managers for some of the weakest ones, in terms of how they're able to do it. So I'm really excited to dig into this today.
Brad Giles 01:11
Mm hmm. Awesome. That's our topic. This is Episode One of two how the best leaders hold people accountable. But before we start that, as always, what's your word or phrase of the day?
Kevin Lawrence 01:23
Yeah, my word today is grateful. I'm just grateful for all the tools we have at our disposal. Yeah, we're just thinking what even the basic technology that we haven't been able to record zoom. And, you know, you and I doing this virtually, you know, we haven't seen each other in a couple years now. Interestingly, yeah. And yet we're doing great work together. so grateful for the that we get to collaborate and do this. And I'm grateful that technology enables it. So yeah, I'll be my word. Today, I'm feeling pretty grateful.
Brad Giles 01:51
Awesome. I've got a phrase, what you say build on in preparation for this one, Uncle Kevin. You can't be a great leader. If you're a technical expert, instead, you need to coach. So what am I talking about there? What I'm saying is that some people are technical experts. And they think that's the way to manage instead, they need to transition to becoming more of a coach to help the people that reported him to be to be high performers or to be accountable, and to achieve great results
Kevin Lawrence 02:30
are shifting from technical experts or coach for the right people?
Brad Giles 02:33
Yep, yeah, yeah, many leaders get stuck thinking they need to be the technical expert. Whereas in In fact, what we're trying to encourage is that they themselves become more of a coach, I help the people to succeed.
Kevin Lawrence 02:47
Yes, the technical expertise actually can get in the way of leading people at some point, because you know the answer, you give the answer, and you approach it very differently than a coach, or a leader by the I like the idea of shifting into coach Awesome. Well, let's dig into this thing around accountability today, in today's show is how the best leaders hold people accountable. And this is part one of two, we'll have another one next week as well.
03:12
And, you know, in your mind, Brad, what do you think to you? What is accountability?
Kevin Lawrence 03:20
What is it like? How would you define it? It's a
Brad Giles 03:24
countability is, I guess, one person, not a group, but one person who has ownership over something, and delivers on their commitments. So accountability versus responsibility, many people can be responsible for something but only one person can be accountable for something. So it's a person who we can count on to deliver what they say they're going to do, or what is expected.
Kevin Lawrence 03:59
Thinking back in the olden days when people use horses and carriages to deliver goods. And it was like at the end, it was the counting on what was delivered. The delivery person would deliver 48 crates of canned goods, and then they would count on that and they would count it so being able to count on what the person's liberty or accountability. There's another interesting model for accountability in a book called the AWS principle, oh Zed as the Wizard of Oz. And they basically have a models called see it on it, solve it do it is above the line, or below the line, you ignore stuff and you make excuses. above the line, you see something and you take accountability to make it happen for making it happen. And that's the kind of overall accountability that's not necessarily project focus, but it's basically taking charge and you know, it's it's, um, it's like a piece of trash on the ground. It's not in some anyone's job description to pick it up. But an accountable person would either pick it up, or get someone to pick it up, they see it, and then they take charge of it. So it's a, it's an interesting model for a deeper view on accountability and helping to create a culture of accountability, which we'll be talking about in Episode Two more. That model really, really helps. But in for these terms, it's, we're talking about holding people accountable or holding them to account. And what this episode is about is this we're really talking about there's elements required to create accountability. And what happens for most people, is they don't have enough elements yet. So if it was that shipment of canned goods, on the old horse and carriage, it just says, you know, it's like the ship, the shipment just is we're gonna send you some canned goods portal, we're gonna send you some stuff. When in reality, it's eight cases of canned goods. And these are Roma tomatoes from Italy. And they're 48 ounce cans. Right? Well, you have all those things that you understand. And by the way, it'll be delivered by whatever day. And it's, it's easier to count when you know what the heck you're supposed to count versus conceptual. So well, we got to dig into there's no the key elements required to create a calendar. And there are specific things that most leaders Miss on. And that's what we're going to dig into.
Brad Giles 06:32
Yeah, so this week, we're talking about the elements that are required to create accountability. And the next week, we're going to talk about building the environment that accountability, so you need the elements, and then you need the environment to get the accountability results that you're looking for. So I guess we've got a saying in Australia, which is the fish rots from the head down, okay. And applying that as a metaphor to a leadership team, like the leader, the CEO, or whoever it is, needs to be an example of best practice when it comes to accountability. You can't hide behind a veil and expect everyone else to not hide behind the veil layer, you need to be accountability, you need to be accountable part of me.
Kevin Lawrence 07:22
Yes. Yeah, and some CEOs don't like that, and some won't start it themselves. And so they're not a great example. And that's not the best way. And we all know, Brad, you and I, both we have, you know, many, many CEOs that work with us one on one, to help them get clear on their goals, and to be accountable to help them to achieve those, which is a great thing to do. It's hard to do yourself, I mean, you and I are accountable to each other on things, I've got a coach that I'm accountable to on my goals, or aren't accountable to them. Yeah. And it's, it's very easy to let your own stuff slip. And if you're not achieving the things you set out to achieve, you're setting a bad example. So basically, start by looking in the mirror, and look at what you need to do for yourself. That's the that's the key
Brad Giles 08:04
point. And that's so interesting, you know, so often you and I have the good fortune to meet with CEOs, who can often times many of them might say something like, Look, what I'm looking for is someone to hold me accountable. That's why I want to get a coach, I want someone to hold me accountable. And we can't stand over them and yell at them every time they don't do the things that they're, they say that
Kevin Lawrence 08:37
we could, but that wouldn't be what we'd want to do and not good use of their time. And it's not effective. It's it doesn't work. They because they would eventually tell us to bugger off exactly as your people do. But sometimes they don't tell you to bugger off. And then they just bugger off themselves and either don't do worker or they leave it's Yeah, you know, accountability is not yelling and screaming at people. The most advanced accountability, and that's what a lot of the tools that we'll share with you is the most advanced accountability. People set their own goals which you agree to, if they manage themselves and track their progress on a daily and weekly basis. And then they report on how they did. He asked the most advanced accountability, and then they give themselves a report card of how they did and how they can do better next time. That's how you grow leaders. And it's the most advanced versions and you don't even have to say a lot, but and that it gets more into the environment about next week. But in order to do
Brad Giles 09:36
that, you got to have the right tools. The elements, which is what we're talking about today is begin with yourself, you know that you've got to find a way to use this, these tools and this environment you've got to create the culture of accountability and even to a degree peer accountability. So really first then is the clear goal. So it's got to be, it's got to be clear in what we're going to be trying to achieve. And so this was actually last week's episode around smart, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time based goals. So refer back to Episode 71, if you want to learn more about that, but the first is that you've got to be clear on the priorities or goals of the company and the individual in their department. And also things like the KPIs or the targets for a department. So working in and on the business, you've got to be very specific around, you could have a budget you could have, you could have simply sales goals, and sell all different ways to be very clear on what you're trying to achieve. That is a part of the foundation of accountability. Because if you don't have clarity on what you're trying to achieve, very specifically, it's going to be very, very hard to do any of the other things. Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 11:10
So we kind of break that down into those clear goals. No projects are things that they're going to deliver on. And then secondly, clear metrics, measures, numbers, yeah. And then we look at those numbers. And we have lots of different phrases that we use, but that's just basically measuring how well you you or your team are performing. And, and, you know, operationally these would, if we're take sales, it would be, you know, number of cold calls that were made number of meetings that were held number of referrals that were received, no kind of lights, all the activity stuff. And if this is things like in production, it's going to be number of widgets produced per hour, the error rate, the overtime rate, you know, and any safety incidents, the the the labor cost per widget, or per hour, and the material cost and the material waste, and all kinds of operational stuff that just tells you how we're running it. And how healthy a part of the business is. So when you kind of have those two things, goals or projects to advance a move ahead, and you call that on the business, and then the operational metrics to tell you how you're performing, to kind of measure the, you know, the, in the business, those two things, they set you up pretty well. And that sounds kind of like a basic, and you would think everyone has this and they don't, not to the point where you should be able to really sit down so okay. Show me your show. Show me your scorecard that tells us that you're doing a great or tells you you're doing a great job. And whether it's this week or this month, this quarter. Yeah, and an average person should pull out somewhere between two and, you know, six or eight numbers that measure those operational metrics or, you know, some call them KPIs. But KPIs has about three different meetings. So operational metrics, and then it should have a list of goals. And if they if everyone in your team has that, like congratulations. That's basically the gold standard for managing a team. Everyone's got clear goals, smart goals, and everyone's got those numbers that indicate the their department or their role that they're doing a good job.
Brad Giles 13:25
That is an interesting statement, one of the really simple questions around Have you established this foundation of accountability is, Does every body in the organization know whether they've had a good day or week? Does everyone in the organization know whether they've had a good day or week now not just because, you know, they enjoyed the sports that they watched, but in their role? Yes, they know. And if they don't, well, there is the opportunity to work on to begin to build an environment or one of the elements that create the environment of accountability.
Kevin Lawrence 14:05
Right and, and sports teams, most sports have this, right, they have things like they know, the practices you need to be at and you know, the drills that you need to run and the times you need to get or the past success that you need to get we have a lot of that stuff. And sometimes we just kind of expect people to show up and work hard and make it happen. And we don't often set them up to win here with us. And again, everything I look at accountability, the highest form of accountability is self accountability. So everything we look at is trying to get people to be able to self manage, and then the manager gets involved as needed. So I always think about it from the shoes of the person doing the work versus you know, big brother. So backing up. So we've got clear goals, check see last week's episode, and then clear metrics or KPIs that indicate performance in their role and how they're doing the on an ongoing basis. The next one is the behavior Expect expectations. And at the end of the day, you know, how you show up and how you treat people and work with people is pretty important. And, you know, there might be expectations around, you know, behavior about showing up on time, there might be expectations shouldn't have to be about weather, it could be around swearing, it could be about, you know, positivity, or negativity or complaining or gossiping, it could be around all kinds of things. Most of the companies we work with set really clear core values that are tangible behaviors, not a list of what makes a nice person. But it's expectations of Well, here's, here's how we work together. And here's what we do. And here's what we won't accept. And so that we've set very clear expectations, so people can tell whether they're consistent with it or not,
Brad Giles 15:59
let's go back to your sports analogy before if you turned up late to practice, or if you missed practice, yes, there would be a consequence, and you would be very, you would understand very well, when you join that team, every time we turn up to at this time to practice and you must be here, or else you might get cut from the team. And so that clarity around behavioral expectations equally, you know, it could be the way that you deal with a meteor if it's a famous team, or it could be us what to do and what not to do. So translating that into a company, understanding the behavioral expectations, as well as having clear metrics and KPIs. And as well as having clear goals that are measurable. This is the elements that build a foundation of accountability. If you don't have behavioral expectations that are very clear, it's very, very hard to hold people accountable to them.
Kevin Lawrence 17:03
Yeah. And it's hard for them to know what's okay and what's not. Okay. And that's the piece that in most companies, it's all way too squishy, the goals are squishy, the numbers may or may not being tracked or not enough of the right ones. And when it comes to behaviors, in some cases, almost anything goes and what ends up happening is the senior leaders don't like it because it becomes a lot of work to manage. There's a lot of chaos. Yeah. And then secondly, the people themselves don't like it, because it's, it's this is a lot of weird stuff happening and finger pointing. And so what we often go into companies, we these are, these aren't rocket science. But these are the basic things that we start by straightening out. Yeah. And it starts to make a big difference. And some people rise up, some people fall on our face, and some people are great. And then or the end, they stay great, all kinds of things happen. But you're putting, you're taking it from a more chaotic environment to something that's clear and tangible. And we just see how it rolls in generally, lots of things go in the right direction. And from a leader, a leader or CEO perspective, they feel much more in control of it. Because they're just not letting that you know, basically not letting the children run wild in house.
Brad Giles 18:15
And then on to carrots and sticks. You must have clarity about consequences and rewards. One of the really interesting questions that I've asked many, many leadership teams about a role is why should we fire that person? And, and people shuffle around in their seats, and people kind of look out the window and people are a little bit uncomfortable. But what why we should be super, super, super clear on why is it that we should fire insert any role sales manager? They excuse me, if they only achieve 40% of their budget? For three years, should we fire them? Okay, what about 60%? What about 80%? Like, we want to be super clear on where is the point at which we let them go? And where is the point at which we go up and give them a big hug.
Kevin Lawrence 19:13
And even when you so it's important to know at some point what's not going to be okay. And what happens in a lot of companies that get kind of get mediocre and slip into what we call the mediocre middle. For a lot of them, what ends up happening is that they start to tolerate these things. Yeah. And they don't do that. And by the way, why don't people deal with underperformers and people that need to be managed more tightly and then potentially let go?
Brad Giles 19:40
I would say there's two reasons because exactly what we're talking about here, we're not clear or be if we are clear. I don't like doing it.
Kevin Lawrence 19:49
Yes. So I was talking with a friend girl for dinner last night and talking with them. I knew her friend and she was talking about this in her company and she took over a new team In that team, there was someone that is her right hand and was toxic beyond toxic. her predecessor hadn't dealt with this toxic person and the predecessor before that hadn't dealt with this toxic person. And they basically said, Well, well, why did you do it? Why were you able to get the person out? And no one else did she said, because I did the work. And she goes, and it was a lot of work. It was because they had, they had a strong HR department, there was a lot of policies and a lot of things that had to get done a lot of paperwork, writing the person up, uncomfortable conversations, etc, etc, etc. And the thing is, people cringed, she said that people would say that, they would want to come in and come into her office after this individual had left. Like, they didn't even want to come into that part of the business until a person was gone, because they were so toxic. But the point is, it's a lot of work. And it's not fun. It's kind of like shoveling the manure out of the barn. It's, it's, it's not pleasurable for most people yet. It's got to be done. And that's, that's why a lot of people won't deal with it. Nevermind the fact that it's, it's the conversations themselves can be excruciating.
Brad Giles 21:11
But that's, like I said, I think I've said to you before, that's when you've got to as a manager, you've got to use the stick as a third element. Like, I'm not the stick, it's the result. That's the stick. I like you, Kevin. But we've agreed that you're going to achieve 100 widgets. And, and you don't, and you've currently done 40. Correct, like,
Kevin Lawrence 21:38
I call it that the basically, they you set them, you set up an environment where they either win by themselves with your support, or they fire themselves. Yeah, so we had an executive that I'd worked with for about five years, he had a new manager who wanted to fire him, and I and I, I was a little attached to this guy, I really liked them, work for them shoulder to shoulder for a long time. And I just said, Hey, if you're gonna, if you're gonna fire this guy, we got to make sure we do the process, right? Because there was no documentation, nothing was being done, right. And because of the role I had in this particular firm, I demanded it, and the CEO support we got it. So I sat in a meeting with this executive and the person. And there was no, no clear goals. Everything was mushy. So I said, Look, I said to his manager, I said, you can't fire him, because you're saying he doesn't achieve his goals. But it's not it's not clear enough. I said, between you tighten this up to exactly what the person will achieve in the next 90 days. We find this out. We had another meeting, we set out they literally exactly super smart goals for the next 90 days, what 90 days come around, we're sitting face to face again. And I was for a number of reasons I was helping to sort the situation out. And we sat there. And I talked to the manager beforehand. He's like, Yeah, he didn't even get close at all. I said, Okay, interesting opinion. So in the meeting, we went through the goals and went through them one by one, and what percentage and at the end of the day, he had achieved about 40% of what he needed to do. So I was able to look at him and say, Hey, you realize you probably didn't earn the opportunity to keep your job? He's like, Yeah, I know. So it wasn't nice, but it was clean. Because crystal clear goals. It wasn't I don't like you. You didn't, you got the he had the opportunity to set your goals and to produce and you didn't produce. So they gave him another 30 days. But then he had to go, which was sad. I didn't I but he wasn't able to produce and I didn't trust the executive 100%. That's why I went through the process. But that's what it's about. And it was a very professional conversation.
Brad Giles 23:47
I want to I love that I want to talk about very quickly a chap called Ron sage. He's a CEO of a company called Panera Bread you may have heard of, if you're North American based, not so much in Australia, very, very successful. They've got about 3000 locations. So this is his perspective on this particular subject. He says I didn't understand that a leader can't put up with employees baloney. If someone isn't producing a leader has a right and an obligation to fire them. Eventually, I learned that servant leadership isn't about being nice at all costs. It's about being helpful at all costs. A leader should be as brutally honest as possible. And you can do this in a kind and loving way. let the chips fall where they may. And remember honesty is helpful. When you tell someone why they're doing a bad job. You're transferring the responsibility. Maybe they improve, maybe they leave whatever the outcome, they own it. I just love that perspective. And it's so relevant. Great comments. Yeah, when it comes to these elements that we're talking about here, like we set the framework and the environment and the elements there. We're talking about, and then we transfer the responsibility on to the individual. And then we coach them, we coach them to succeed, but they own the outcome.
Kevin Lawrence 25:11
Yes, and the onus of performance and reporting performance sits on their shoulders, we're here to help facilitate them clarifying what they need to achieve. troubleshooting things along the way. But the but the pressure to perform stays with them.
Brad Giles 25:28
And then let's move on to the last one, which is transparent.
Kevin Lawrence 25:30
But let's not forget, let's not forget the carrot. That's the stick. But the carrot is celebrated and acknowledging success. Right? You need tools for recognition and acknowledgement, and different people thrive on different things. Now work with someone that really thrives on recognition. So when they do something amazing, I make sure it's recognized in front of lots of other people. Yeah, some others don't like that so much, but what is the carrot? What is the reward or the positive reinforcement? You know, sometimes it can be applause. Sometimes it can be, you know, just literally getting recognized or asking them how they did it. But what is the positive reinforcement for doing well, and, and thinking, thinking about that part of the system? And it could be a financial incentive. You know, financial incentives can kind of get messy, sometimes very easily. But what is positive reinforcement?
Brad Giles 26:30
Sometimes, many people will do amazing and remarkable things and will achieve amazing outcomes. Only knowing that the leader will say, Kevin, like you did a really good job there. Thank you. So very much like that, that simple sentence can transform people's input and what they achieve,
Kevin Lawrence 26:55
again, and some people need to be all that, but that's a whole, you know, everyone, knowing your people, what is it, they need, what gets the best out of them, everyone's got a slightly different thing. And knowing that really helps, so go on, Brad, you want to know more you wanted to cover? Go ahead.
Brad Giles 27:10
Okay, so let's get on to the last one transparent reporting, one source of truth to see the results. So So you said before, it's about the manager holding the person accountable, or the individual self holding someone accountable. But I push back and say to you, there is another higher level, a higher wisdom, if you like a higher level. And that is pure accountability. So if we can create an environment where everyone knows what everyone has to achieve, and those people both support and hold one another accountable in that environment, beyond the manager, like that's the gold standard that is amazing to achieve.
Kevin Lawrence 27:56
It is and that's part of the environmental, I'll make a note of that. We'll talk about that new environment.
Brad Giles 28:01
Yeah. So we want people to know what others need to achieve. Because if you think about the whole organization, as let's say, a series of cogs or elements, we want to know if marketing isn't performing their job, that's going to have a flow on effect, to sales, to operations, to counting, all of those things are going to really matter. So we want it to be transparent. So we know when someone isn't performing, so that other team members can support them, if needed.
Kevin Lawrence 28:30
And it just creates an environment of openness versus not having a little secrets. And no, I'm actually a big believer in 316 being transparent. Yeah, or at least people coming on a tight team. It can be transparent, the full reporting. But even on a minimum level, coming back to saying here's what the strengths weren't, here's what I need to work on. Yeah. So the idea here, and really kind of the essence
28:55
of accountability is there's a bunch of basic tools to have if things
Kevin Lawrence 29:03
were to be used or not things element elements, elements, basic elements to have in place to make accountability happen. If you don't have them, it's kind of hard. Otherwise, you got to resort to yelling and screaming and kicking and punching. And that's horrible. So the elements we've talked about, really are starting with yourself and making sure you are leading by example and are accountable to the goals that matter most to you. And obviously the ones that relate to the company. And then from there, clear goals, the projects that you're going to achieve on a regular basis things you're going to move ahead. As we talked about last episode, clear metrics, the numbers that indicate you and your team are operating well. behavioral expectations are you know the expectations of how we conduct ourselves and how we treat other people and work with other people and work with our clients. And then carrots and sticks to consequence. As rewards, you know, when good things happen, what happens? And how do we reinforce the good stuff. And then when things aren't achieved, this is what separates, you know, the serious, highly effective leaders from the mediocre is, you know, making sure the consequences are real, making sure the tension is felt, or in some cases that they lose opportunities, responsibilities, or even their employment. And then transparency just to having an all transparent one makes it easier to manage. But then it grits that leverage of that peer pressure or that pure accountability.
Brad Giles 30:36
Awesome
Kevin Lawrence 30:37
What kind of Final Thoughts would you add onto this, Brad, any kind of your overall things you'd say?
Brad Giles 30:42
accountability is complex. And many leaders think I want to buy a piece of software that I can plug in, and everything will work and now and then, once I start paying it, it'll, it'll all be just like a magical machine that spits out $100 bills where everyone will be accountable, but you need the elements. And you need the environment to create the accountability. And it's not hard, you just got to have the right mindset and I go back to what age sort of making something.
Kevin Lawrence 31:14
Okay, so awesome. Thanks for listening. This has been another episode of the growth whispers with Brad and Kevin on Kevin. He's Brad for the video version, go to youtube.com and just look up the growth whispers for Brad evolution partners com.au and for Kevin Lawrence and co.com. Keep thinking about accountability and maybe how you can take it up a bit of a notch with your yourself and your team. Have a great week and hope you join us next week as well. Have a good one.